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The Jimmy Governor Murders

Thomas Keneally’s 1972 novel The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Fred Schepisi’s subsequent 1978 film of the same name were based loosely on one of the worst real-life killing sprees that Australia has ever seen. It is a story of racial intolerance that led to the savage murders of nine people. And what made the killings even more abhorrent was that the victims were women, children or old men. They have gone down in our history as the Jimmy Governor Murders.

In the year 1900, 23-year-old Jimmy Governor, the son of a white father and an Aboriginal mother, left the western New South Wales town of Gulgong with his 16-year-old white wife, Ethel Mary Page, and their baby daughter in the hope that they could leave the memories of their tormented existence behind. Growing up torn between the two races had been a nightmare for Governor but that was now compounded tenfold with his young white wife and mixed-race child. Mixed marriages were harshly frowned upon at the turn of the century. The odd couple were ridiculed everywhere they went.

The little family headed west, where Governor found work putting in fences at the Gilgandra property of free settler and backbone of the community, John Mawbey, and they set up camp in the bush not far from the homestead. But nothing had changed and the marriage was openly frowned upon. The Mawbeys didn’t hesitate in voicing their opinions. Soon after Governor began work at the Mawbeys, he was joined by his brother Joe, his friends and their families, including the simple-minded Jacky Underwood. As it was, Governor was finding it hard enough to support his own wife and child, let alone the newcomers.

When Governor confronted his boss and asked for extra supplies to feed his extended family, John Mawbey refused. That night, this time with his brother Joe and the simpleton Underwood in tow, Governor again confronted his boss at the old homestead where Mr Mawbey was staying, having left his family at their new homestead a few miles away.

Again Mr Mawbey wouldn’t be intimidated and refused extra supplies for the unwanted guests. Enraged at the rejection of food and intent on revenge – yet not willing to take on the foreboding John Mawbey, even though it would have been three against one – Governor and his sidekicks headed off in the direction of the new Mawbey homestead.

The occupants of the homestead were easy pickings for three men armed with nulla nullas and axes and with murder on their minds. Inside were John Mawbey’s wife Sarah, the Mawbey daughters Grace, 16, and Hilda, 11, the boys Percy, 14, Sydney 12, Bertie, 9, Cecil, 6, Garnett, 3 and their cousin out from Sydney, 13-year-old George. Also inside the homestead were Mrs Mawbey’s sister, 18-year-old Elsie Clarke, and the family’s teacher, Helen Kerz.

The younger children were already in bed when the enraged Governor pounded on the door and demanded to be let in. Mrs Mawbey and the school teacher Miss Kerz confronted him at the front door and a shouting match took place before the women slammed the door in his face. The three men smashed the door down and took to the women and children indiscriminately, until they were exhausted and could catch and kill no more. By the time they left Mrs Mawbey, her daughters Grace and Hilda, her son Percy and the schoolteacher Helen Kerz lay dead. Elsie Clarke was severely injured and just barely alive. Somehow, the others had managed to escape.

As the word spread that there were murderous savages on the loose, the Gilgandra and surrounding districts went into lockdown and the hunt for the Governor brothers and Underwood gathered momentum. Jimmy Governor’s wife Ethel was quickly picked up at the Mawbey property and was cleared of any part in the terrible crimes committed by her husband and his friends.

The gang’s next victim was a 70-year-old farmer on his property at Gulgong, who had argued with Governor some time earlier over payment for a job that Governor had done for him. The three men confronted the older man and axed him to death.

Soon after the Governor brothers unloaded Jacky Underwood, who was unable to keep up the pace as they kept ahead of the blacktrackers and police. Underwood was quickly picked up, tried and found guilty for his part in the killings.

The Governor brothers turned up next at the tiny township of Poggi, east of Gulgong, where they decided to call on the homestead of a Michael O’Brien, who Jimmy had had unsatisfactory dealings with years earlier. But Mr O’Brien wasn’t home. Instead in the house was his heavily pregnant wife Elizabeth, their 15-month-old son, and the family midwife, Catherine Bennett.

As Miss Bennett opened the door she was shot point-blank by Jimmy Governor with a rifle he had stolen from his previous victim. As Mrs O’Brien did her best to protect her baby son, she and the infant were chopped to death with a tomahawk. Miraculously, Catherine Bennett lived to identify Jimmy Governor in court.

Their next victim, 70-year-old Kieran Fitzpatrick, was another farmer who Jimmy had had a run in with years earlier. When they arrived at Mr Fitzpatrick’s homestead in nearby Wollar they shot him in the shoulder and as he lay on the ground unable to move they hacked him to death with an axe. Soon after Jimmy raped the 15-year-old daughter of a nearby farmer.

With the biggest force of men on horseback ever assembled outside of war – more than 2000 – looking for them, and with a reward of £2000 for their capture dead or alive, the Governor brothers decided to go their separate ways. On the evening of 13 October 1900, Jimmy Governor was trapped by two search parties on the banks of the Forbes River. They opened fire and wounded the fugitive, but he managed to escape after limping off into the undergrowth. He was eventually arrested two weeks later on 27 October near the coastal town of Wingham. Four days later his brother Joe was shot dead by troopers near Singleton.

After a two-day trial at Sydney’s Darlinghurst Criminal Court it took the jury just ten minutes to find Jimmy Governor guilty of nine counts of murder. He was sentenced to death and hanged in Darlinghurst Jail on 18 January 1901. The dim-witted Jacky Underwood had been hanged in Dubbo Jail four days earlier.